Luke Snyder had planned to compete in a PBR Touring Pro Division event today in Clovis, Calif. Instead, he’s heading to Hawaii.

A $217,500 paycheck has a way of changing your mind.

Luke Snyder, who became the Last Cowboy Standing at Mandalay Bay Events Center on Saturday, is going to Maui with his girlfriend, Jennifer. They’re leaving Thursday and plan to return next Monday. They will stay at the Grand Wailea, the same resort Snyder and his fellow PBR riders stayed at when they competed in the Myron Duarte Challenge in 2006.

When Snyder won more than $264,000 for capturing the World Finals event title in 2001 soon after turning 19, he purchased, among other things, a new Cadillac Escalade.

“I’m a lot older and wiser, and that’s a lot of money to win when you’re 19,” the 28-year-old Snyder said. “I know what to do with it nowadays, so no really big splurges except me and my girl are going down to Hawaii.

“We’re going to do a little scuba diving and a little sun tanning.”

Snyder can use a break after competing in 13 of PBR’s first 15 Built Ford Tough Series contests. He jammed one of his thumbs Saturday and sustained a slight concussion after getting slammed by his second-round bull, Judd Leffew and D BAR M’s Braveheart.

“So I’m going to take off and get to feeling better for Seattle,” Snyder said of the next major PBR tour stop, April 29 and 30, after a break this week for Easter.

After scoring 88 points on D&H Cattle Co.’s Slim Chance in Round 1, Snyder made the whistle and earned a 90.5 on Braveheart. He took a game plan into the chute with him aboard Braveheart, who earned 44.5 bull points.

“I’ve been on him at a Touring Pro in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and he had bucked me off, but even after he bucked me off, he felt good,” Snyder said. “He kept running me back so I just stayed way out over the front of him [in Las Vegas]. He rode really good; I mean he really bucked. He was right there to the left. Usually he goes out a little further, so I was happy about that.”

Snyder’s payday bonanza came aboard Wild N Out. The Chad Berger and Clay Struve bull contributed 44.25 points to Snyder’s confetti-flying 90-pointer. It was the Missouri cowboy’s first trip aboard Wild N Out.

“The past eight trips – I guess – that bull’s turned right there to the left, and with me he went right there to the right,” he said. “So it just goes to show once you think you know something, they’re going to do something completely different.”

Wild N Out’s change of direction didn’t unnerve the 2001 PBR Rookie of the Year: “There was literally nothing going through my head – just pure confidence and knowing I had to hang on.”

PBR Livestock Director Cody Lambert noticed a difference in Snyder’s physique when he came into the pregame riders meeting.

“He looked more like [two-time PBR World Champion] Justin McBride – he looked wiry,” Lambert said. “Luke has never been fat, but he’s always been relatively small. And he’s been soft compared to what he looks like now. He’s dedicated himself in a way that he’s probably needed to for the last few years, and it really paid off there.”

Snyder was riding so well that it didn’t matter which way his bulls turned or what they did to unseat him.

“I had bulls that went left and bulls that went right, and I felt solid on all three of ’em,” he said. “I felt like they were some of the toughest bulls I’ve been on all year, too. For the most part I just slid up, nodded my head and let reactions take over.

“I was in a zone, pretty much, that whole day.”

Lambert said it’s been a long time since Snyder performed the way he did to become the Last Cowboy Standing.

“He just out-rode everyone, and that’s a big accomplishment,” he said. “Especially in an event like that, when you don’t know how many times you’re going to have to ride and what bulls you’re going to be getting on, or anything like that, just stepping up and answering the call whenever you get the chance.

“I’d say that’s the hardest event to win that we’ve had so far. And he dominated.”

— by Chris McManes